Changed Enough
by Bubblewrap-Queen
Summary: Dudley has learned a valuable lesson, and his whole life is changed because of it, but is it changed enough that when he falls for a girl who's a witch, who will he choose? His parents or his love? No OCs, post DH.
1. Prolouge

**Disclaimer- I don't own Harry Potter, or anything else mentioned in this fan fiction.**

**Summary- Dudley has learned a valuable lesson, and his whole life is changed because of it, but is it changed enough that when he falls for a girl who says she's a witch, who will he choose? His parents or his love? No OCs, post DH. **

**Author's note- This idea just presented itself to me shortly after finishing DH, and it wouldn't leave me alone. In this story Dudley is nice! If you don't like him being nice, I'm sure there are plenty of other stories out there were he's a stupid bullying prat, and you can go read one of them. **

**Um… sorry, this chapter is going to end up being very short. So are the other chapters, probably. Anyway… here you go.**

The eighteen year old boy glanced out the window over his bed, and sighed. A year ago, he had been living with his parents in blissful ignorance of the world around him. He had been a fat, stupid boy, convinced that he was the center of the universe.

But all that had changed the day the wizards had taken them away. On that day, the day he had first heard the name of Lord Voldemort, his life had been changed forever.

Well, it had really started two years earlier, with the dementors. His cousin had saved him. His 'freak' of a cousin, the cousin who had suffered years of taunts and pain at Dudley's hands, that same cousin, had saved him.

But his parents said that all wizards were freaks. But freaks didn't do that, did they?

It had taken two more years, but Dudley Dursley had changed. When he and his parents arrived at the safe-house where they would be staying until it was 'safe' again, he had started picking up small facts from some of the wizards who would stop by to occasionally to make sure the wards were still strong, and that the family was still alive.

Around Christmas, he asked if he could help. He didn't know who was more shocked, His parents, the wizards, or himself. Probably he was.

Dudley had learned a lot in the past few months. He had learned that he was a fast learner, when he applied himself, he learned that books were sometimes very interesting, he discovered that he was hugely allergic to macadamia nuts, and he learned that fruit was good (This last revelation led to the loss of a couple… dozen… pounds, so he was now an almost normal weight) And he learned that he couldn't sit by and watch his cousin be killed, not when Harry had saved his life. He had discovered honor. So Dudley would do everything he could to return the favor, or at least make his task easier.

Of course, Dudley wasn't a wizard, so he couldn't do much. Mainly, he was supposed to watch the news, read the papers, and tell the members of the order of any strange occurrences that had happened in muggle towns. Kingsley Shacklebolt, who later became minister of magic, would later say that it was at least fifty percent due to Dudley's efforts that the muggle world never found out about magic. He told them about people who might have survived Death Eater attacks, and might need mind wipes. He became good at spotting patterns in the attacks, and could occasionally even predict where the next one would be. At least ten Death Eaters were in Azkaban thanks to him.

He'd moved out of the hiding place not long after the war ended, and now had a small flat in downtown London, not far from where he worked part time at (of all things) a _bookshop_. He was a part time student at a small college studying medicine, and hadn't spoken to anyone magical in several months. He was sure that they simply didn't need him anymore, so had forgotten him.

His parents had eventually forgiven him, and he was glad. They might be intolerant of anyone different from them, but they were still his parents, and he had missed not talking to them.

Yes, things had changed, drastically in the past year.

He didn't know that things were about to change even more.

**Like I said, short, hopefully the next chapters will be slightly longer.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer- I don't own Harry Potter, or anything else mentioned in this fan fiction.**

**Summary- Dudley has learned a valuable lesson, and his whole life is changed because of it, but is it changed enough that when he falls for a girl who's a witch, who will he choose? His parents or his love? No OCs, post DH. **

**AN/Hides/ this is the chapter where we find out who Dudley is going to be paired with! At least one of my reviewers has already figured it out, but for the rest of you… well, that's what this chapter is for!**

**You might wonder why some of the order seem so accepting of Dudley already- It's because they already know how Dudley's been helping the order. The only reason the trio don't know is because they were on the run for most of book seven, so no one thought to tell them.**

**I would like to give huge thanks to everyone who reviewed this story or put it on alert, or favorites. **

Harry Potter sat with his two best friends, Ron Weasly and Hermione Granger in a café in London, not far from the leaky cauldron. It was actually, the same café the three had been at when attacked by Death Eaters the previous year, and if it was up to them they would not be there at all.

"Hello, Harry, sorry I'm late," Ginny said, sitting down next to Harry.

"Where were you?" Harry asked his girlfriend.

"Oh, just having a chat with mum," Ginny responded in an innocent enough tone. Harry shrugged and continued scanning the street. Ron went back to muttering darkly about the coffee, but Hermione looked up sharply and raised her eyebrows at Ginny, seemingly curios about aforementioned conversation, but Ginny averted her eyes. Neither of the boys noticed this.

Five minutes later, Ron said, "Let's go, he's not coming."

"Ronald," Hermione said, annoyed, "we can wait a few more minutes."

"I don't see why you even wanted to meet with him," Ron muttered grumpily, his arms folded over his chest, "You've always said he hated you."

Harry just shrugged.

A voice from behind the foursome said "Harry?" and they all turned around to see a tall blond boy with a small scar on his right cheek and a decidedly nervous expression on his face.

Harry gaped, and the boy smiled anxiously, "Do you recognize me?"

"Dudley?" Harry asked, "You've lost some weight, haven't you?"

Dudley nodded sheepishly, and dragged a chair over from the next chair to sit beside Ron, who promptly slid his chair closer to Hermione.

There was a decidedly awkward pause, and then Harry said, "So… Er- Why did you want to meet with me anyway?"

"I wanted to say… um… thanks for saving my life, you know… that time with the dementors." He was staring at the table as if wishing it would come to life and swallow him. Harry suddenly felt very awkward.

"Well… you know… I couldn't just stand by and let them kiss you." He expected his cousin to react in confusion at the phrase 'kiss', and was surprised when he simply nodded and continued staring at the table.

There were another couple of minutes of awkwardness, before Ginny broke it by asking "Where'd you get the scar?"

Dudley looked up and smiled a little. "My only encounter with a Death Eater," he said.

"What were you doing with a Death Eater?" Ron said suspiciously.

So then Dudley was explaining what he'd been doing for the past year, and the others were asking questions, even Harry, who had once thought that he could never hate anyone more than his great bullying git of a cousin.

That was over- Dudley had been working hard to save lives all year. He'd been working towards the same goal as Harry. To Harry, Dudley had stopped being Dudley the bully, Dudley the leader of a gang who beat up ten year olds for fun, the moment he made the decision to help, and he was now just Dudley his cousin.

Eventually, Ron said, "So what happened with the Death Eater?"

Dudley grinned, a confident smile, rather than a nervous one, and said, "Well, apparently they were getting fed up with me ruining their stupid 'games', so they caught me while I was out of the house and dragged me to an alley somewhere. There were two of them, Bellatrix Lestrange, and some man, I don't know who, he never took his mask off, and she never said his name."

"Anyway, she started shooting curses at me, and one of them hit, and left a scar." He shrugged.

"How did you get away?" Hermione asked.

"I kicked the man and ran off. I guess they thought I wasn't that important, because they just Dissaperated away."

Ginny glanced at her watch and then jumped up in a panic, "We've got to get home, mum's planning a dinner, she's invited the whole family, and some of the order, Bill and Fleur have some news…" She and Hermione shared another look, the meaning of which all three boys completely missed, and Hermione gasped. She, Ginny, and Ron moved towards the door, but Harry didn't move. He was watching Dudley.

"Dudley, d'you want to come with us?"

A pause, and then Dudley nodded.

"That's great, now let's go," said Ginny impatiently.

-

"Everyone, I wanted to make an announcement!"

Harry looked up from his plate to see a beaming Bill at the head of the table. The level of noise dropped somewhat.

"It is my pleasure to announce that my beautiful wife and I will soon be parents!"

Dead silence, and then everyone was rushing to congratulate Bill and Fleur. Finally the noise died down, and Mrs. Weasly came out with a huge cake floating in front of her.

"Hello, Harry," said a voice behind him. Harry started and turned around to see Luna Lovegood standing behind him.

"Erm… hello," he replied. "So… having a nice summer?"

"Pretty nice, thank you," said Luna in her dreamy voice, "except Daddy cancelled our trip to Austria, we were going to look for a new species of gulping plimpies, but he's gotten a little more cautious after the ministry took me away last Christmas…" She trailed off with a shrug.

There was a pause, and then Luna said, "I think your friend is staring at us."

"What?" Harry said, turning around to see Dudley gaping at the two of them. "Oh, yea, Luna, this is my cousin Dudley, Dudley, this is Luna Lovegood."

"Nice to meet you…" Dudley said a most peculiar expression on his face.

And then Harry recognized it. It was the same one Ron had worn when he saw Hermione at the Yule Ball.

Dudley _liked_ Luna.

Feeling immensely proud on having figured this out without any help from Hermione, he left, happy that they were getting on so well (He could hear them laughing from the other side of the yard, and Luna seemed deep in an explanation of… something or other, which Dudley seemed to be listening to attentively). Most people would be laughing at Luna, not with her.

Hermione walked up to him, "Hi, Harry, have you seen Dudley, Mrs. Weasly wants to know if he wants to stay the night, since it's getting dark and he can't exactly apparate…"

"Oh, yea," Harry said, "He's over there talking to Luna."

"Luna?" said Hermione, looking startled.

"Yup."

**Bad ending… ah well!**

**I'm not happy with this chapter at all, maybe I'll go back and change it later… anyway, for those of you who think Dudley and Luna would never like each other, I'd like to point out that this is fan fiction for a reason. Like, you'd never see Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger falling in love in the books, but there are loads of fan fictions where they do. **


End file.
